you are looking at live pictures of the vatican city where the conclave of the cardinals will convene. they will cast their votes in the cysteisistine chapel and th that a new pope may be elected by the start of holy week march 24th. we are joined by the rome bureau chief, claudio. and claudio, what surprised me the most is the timing of this. i know lots of hints and everybody is looking backwards that he seemed to hint that he would leave before he died in office, but the idea of doing this in the middle of lent. >> certainly nobody expected this. well, this is also the era of the faith meaning that most analysts thought that he will wait until at least next year to make a drastic decision if he was to make a drastic decision at all. nobodycted him to follow ip up on the hint in 2012 that if his strength leaves him that he could not perform his duty of the 1.2 billion catholics around the world, then he would resign, but nobody really took that seriously, because i mean, john paul ii, his predecessor was 85 and he could barely walk and speak. he was mumbling and he still didn't resi